


No One Is Born Broken

by deir



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-17 15:49:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28727637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deir/pseuds/deir
Summary: "Finally seeing his face made it seem like a light had turned on in her mind, chasing out the shadows in her memories."A meditation on Ainsley Whitly. Canon adjacent, until season two (probably) proves otherwise.
Relationships: Ainsley Whitly & Jessica Whitly, Ainsley Whitly & Martin Whitly, Malcolm Bright & Ainsley Whitly, Paul Lazar | John Watkins & Ainsley Whitly
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15





	No One Is Born Broken

**Author's Note:**

> I really thought I was going to finish this before the premiere. Ah, well.
> 
> Fair warning: I've never met a comma I didn't like.

Ainsley Whitly has always been perfect. Perfect grades. Perfect smile. Perfect friends. She had learned to read a room at a very young age. Read the lines of worry and anxiety in the faces of the adults who surrounded her, learned to modulate her behavior so that those lines would smooth out into perfect smiling faces. Progress reports from child psychologists and teachers were filled with phrases like “a delightful young girl”, “full of impressive drive”, and “remarkably well-adjusted, all things considered”. Bordering on precocious, but not obnoxiously so, she was well able to handle adults and children alike, and carved out a comfortable social position amongst her classmates that afforded her the privileges associated with being popular at an elite private school.

She was, of course, helped along by her mother. After the ordeal that Malcolm went through with bullying in grade school, by both teachers and classmates, Jessica Whitly vowed not to allow it to happen again to Ainsley. She took extreme measures to make sure her youngest child was treated just as any other student was, so any discussion of The Surgeon was strictly forbidden amongst the school faculty and staff, and any gossiping amongst the students was to be stamped out immediately. She did what she could to control the wagging tongues of the other parents, and for the most part Ainsley was able to enjoy a drama free life at school that Malcolm never could have dreamed of. However, the system wasn’t perfect, and sometimes things slipped through. In the fifth grade there was a new boy in her class, and once he learned of her family’s sordid history he needled her with question after question until finally one of her teachers noticed and scolded him. Still, his incessant pestering haunted her thoughts all day. “Have you ever seen a dead body? Do you still see your dad? Does he talk about the murders with you? Is it true your brother called the cops on him? Does your brother remember anything about the murders? Did your brother help him? Did you help him? Did your mom help him? Have you ever seen a dead body have you ever seen a dead body have you ever seen a dead body?”

After being interrogated by the new boy all day she struggled to fall asleep that night. As a rule she did not think about her father often. She knew that her mother and brother would fight about him, about Malcolm wanting to see him, but they were very careful about having those arguments away from her. None of the psychiatrists she saw seemed comfortable discussing the more gruesome aspects of her father’s situation, they were more interested in how she felt in his absence than what she remembered from when he was around. In truth she doesn’t remember much from that time in her life. She can remember following him into the basement once, but it’s disjointed, a fragmented recollection. She had been hiding outside his office while he was working, she could hear him talking and the murmured response from a voice she didn’t recognize. She remembers a hallway that led to someplace dark and how she was too afraid to keep going, even though she could see her father walking quickly at the other end. Then she remembers being carried away from the hall and being set down at the bottom of the basement steps. She can never remember the face of the man who had carried her, only his shoes. Dark brown boots with mismatched laces and a crust of mud. Logically it makes the most sense for the man to have been her father, who else would have been in the basement? But Ainsley had always thought of him as someone else entirely, a ghostly friend just for her, a friend she had named Mr. Boots. He had even given her a gift, a small statue of an angel that she had found on the bottom step of the basement stairs.

She tried to let her thoughts of her father slip away as she closed her eyes, but when she dreamed she found herself walking down the dark hallway from her memory, and instead of her own footsteps echoing back to her all she could hear was that boys question over and over again, “Have you ever seen a dead body?”. The walls were damp and there was a strong smell of rot that permeated the air. She was overwhelmed by an intense fear and wished that Malcolm was there with her. As she continued down the hallway she realized that someone was standing at the other end. It was a man, but he was turned around so she couldn't see his face. Something was laying at his feet, but it was too dark for her to tell what it was. She could hear the man singing, but she couldn’t make out the words, only the melody; a haunting lullaby that brought her to a full stop. The man turned towards her, and she heard him call her name, but she woke up before she could see his face. She turned and stared at the small angel statue that had sat on her bed side table ever since the night she found it. For reasons she did not understand yet, the innocent angel face now filled her with dread. She took the statue, wrapped it in an old t-shirt, and brought it down to the basement where a box of items were waiting to be put in storage. At breakfast she told her mother about the boy and his questions. When she arrived at school he’d already been transferred to another class. She told no one about the dream, not even when it started to reoccur years later.

* * *

When Ainsley is thirteen years old Jessica transfers her therapeutic care into the hands of Dr. Gabrielle Le Deux, after Malcolm starts doing so well with her. Dr. Le Deux is not like Ainsley’s other doctors. Decades of dealing with a rich clientele had sharpened an already keen mind and her ability to sniff out bullshit was quite remarkable. Her reports to Jessica Whitly mention “a calculated approach to evading therapeutic analysis ”, “a penchant for adjusting her behavior depending on who she was interacting with”, and “ occasionally speaking in fervent religious allegory that did not mesh with her family’s church-only-on-Christmas-and-Easter lifestyle”. About two months into therapy Dr. Le Deux unsuccessfully tried to discuss Mr. Boots, after Ainsley had offhandedly mentioned the ghost she used to see in her basement. After trying to dodge the doctor’s questions Ainsley had finally clammed up and refused to speak for the rest of the session. When she returned home she was able to convince her mother that the twice weekly therapy sessions were no longer necessary, and that the once a month sessions with the school counselor, an older and easily charmed woman who never pressed Ainsley on topics she’d rather not discuss, would suffice. Jessica had been occupied by Malcolm’s imminent departure to college at the time, so she had been fairly amenable to the idea of having only one child in intensive therapy.

* * *

In her sophomore year of high school she’s assigned a research project that necessitates the use of the New York Public Library microfiche archive. Under the watchful eye of her mother’s driver she spends several hours in the midtown branch combing through dusty catalogs and pulling reel after reel of microfiche, trying to track down primary sources for her paper on post WW2 urban development in NYC and its surrounding suburbs. After what feels like the thousandth article on overpasses and state parks she finally loads the last reel into the viewer, only to quickly realize that it had been misfiled, as the front page article was announcing Bill Clinton’s victory in the 1992 presidential election. She was about to remove the reel when an article halfway down the page caught her eye, “The Surgeon Strikes Again: Fourth Victim In Series of Gruesome Murders Found”. Glancing to make sure that her mother’s driver wasn’t looking over her shoulder, Ainlsey quickly began to devour the article’s contents. She recognizes the name of the victim and realizes that this is the fourth victim in her father's Quartet series, her stomach turning as she remembers the insipid name the media had given this particular grouping of murders, her father being so prolific that his crimes needed to be categorized. She reads the article in its entirety three times, and prints a copy to bring home, making sure to tuck it in between the other articles she had printed for her paper. The next day she tells her mother that she is meeting three other classmates after school for more research, and that she wouldn’t need a chaperone in the library of all places, to which Jessica had reluctantly agreed. She spends the next three afternoons in the library, pulling every article, academic paper, and criminal psychology book that mentions her father by name, and begins, for the first time in her life, to put together a clear understanding of her father and his crimes.

Her conclusion from all of her research is this: her father is an unredeemable monster. Ainsley and Malcolm’s worldviews differ in many ways, but the most obvious difference is that in Ainsley’s world there are no moral greys for people and their sins to hide in. Twenty three people are dead because of her father. Twenty three families destroyed. That’s all she needs to know. She stuffs Martin Whitly back into the drawer in her mind that he has always lived in, and vows not to take him out again. She keeps that vow for ten years. In that time she fields awkward questions from classmates and coworkers after they find out who she is, and gives short explanations to boyfriends who wonder why she doesn’t talk about her father, but otherwise keeps that drawer closed up tight. Until Malcolm returns to New York, and starts to see him again.

When she finds out that Malcolm has been secretly seeing Martin again she’s conflicted. She’s mostly worried, for Malcolm and her mother, she remembers what they were both like in the years after her father’s arrest, but she’s also surprised to find that she feels envious of Malcolm and his relationship with their father. She still believes him to be a monster, knows that what he’s done is unforgivable, but still a small part of her knows that there’s something missing inside of her, and she wonders if understanding Martin will help her understand herself. This is what motivates her to pitch an interview with The Surgeon to her producers. It’s macabre and pulpy and they eat it up.

* * *

The interview should have been a disaster. Things fell apart almost immediately when her father had started twisting her questions into a vehicle for his ego. Then Malcolm had shown up with a new serial killer in his sights and more questions about her father’s past and she didn’t think she could handle the answers. She had tried to take back control by making Martin confront what his actions had done to Malcolm, but all she could think about was her own unnamed damage, the pit of rage in her stomach that never seemed to go away. She wanted to scream in his face, make him tell her what was wrong with her. But then alarms and locked doors, and an inmate screaming her name. Jin bleeding on the floor and gasping for breath. For a brief moment she thought how fitting that there was a man bleeding to death surrounded by Whitly’s, all in perfect health. Like history repeating itself. She shook the thought loose and focused on Jin, on convincing Malcolm to let their father save him. Her reach for the camera was almost instinctual. The scene in front of her was textbook trashy TV, and she knew at that point was the only thing that would save the rest of the interview. She ignored Malcolm’s look of disbelief and steadied her voice as she narrated her father’s actions. He was completely absorbed in his task. She would have assumed that twenty years away from the knife would have shaken his composure, but his hands were steady as he worked. The rest of the night is a blur as Martin works on Jin, and then finally the ambulance arrives and they rush to the hospital. The surgeon compliments Martin’s work and assures Ainsley that Jin will make a full recovery.

While Jin is sleeping she takes a moment to unravel the events of the night. Though she knows she most likely saved the interview from being cut from the show altogether, she’s not happy with how events played out, not even taking Jin’s near death into account. She thought back to their first meeting with her father at Claremont when she had been alone. She had started out resolute in her determination to be unaffected by him, but found her resolve fractured by her father’s charm and his compliments and the small praise he had shown her. She felt foolish, knowing that she was being manipulated, yet still yearning for his approval. She hated how easy it was for him to put her at ease. How willing she was to pretend he was just her father, and not a monster too. That she was normal. She realized that tonight had gone almost the same way, her determined to be objective and distant with him, and him undoing that resistance with barely any effort. Her fears were confirmed when she got a call from Malcolm explaining how their father had orchestrated everything that had gone wrong that day. She tried not to think about how her father had known someone was going to be injured that day by the inmate, but he had no way of knowing who it was going to be, how it could’ve just as easily been her. She further tried not to think about how if her father had known Malcolm was going to be there he might not have risked it.

* * *

John Watkins has only killed for her once: a handsy boy she met at a college bar when she was still a junior in high school. She uncovered this connection completely by chance. Malcolm had left a copy of the case file at Jessica’s house after finding out the FBI had taken over the Junkyard Killer case, and Ainsley had come across it and taken the opportunity to review the details. When she read the name “Ballard, Steven” on the list of victims something dark and familiar unfurled in her chest and she quickly turned to the page where the details of his death were recorded.

“Ballard, Steven. Reported missing May 2, 2010. Last seen departing Roche and O’Brien’s bar and returning to his fraternity house near the Haverford College campus. Bodily remains identified through DNA matching. Cause of death: strangulation. Victim’s body was compacted post-mortem, however there are several fractures that were sustained prior to death: fracture of bilateral tibia, fracture of left femur, and fracture of the forearm. Additionally both hands appear to have been crushed by blunt force, most likely a hammer. Due to the positioning of the body in the compacted car these injuries could not have been sustained during compaction.”

When she was seventeen she had convinced her mother to let her visit an older friend at a college in Pennsylvania as an educational visit to help her decide where she wanted to go to school. She and her friend had used fake IDs to get into one of the bars in town and an upperclassmen had been overly aggressive in trying to get to know her. She ended up kneeing him in the groin, drawing on the few self defense lessons imparted on her by Gil, and going back to the dorms with her friend when he continued to ignore her refusals. She had never thought about the incident again.

The college and date of disappearance lined up with the trip she had taken in high school. Clipped to the list of names was Malcolm’s analysis of the victim’s death. He had noted the stark difference between this victim’s death and the rest, specifically how personal it seemed. Strangulation required not only strength, but also an intense and focused emotional response to the victim. Malcolm theorized that Ballard hadn’t been a victim of the killer’s fervent need to cleanse the filth of the world, this had been more personal than that, however he also stated that without more information he would not be able to determine the nature of the relationship between victim and killer. Ainsley returned the casefile to where she found it, sans the description and analysis of the college student’s death, which she kept for herself. She also retrieved her diary from 2010 from the box underneath her old bed in the townhouse. When she returned to her apartment she carefully read the entry she wrote after returning from her weekend away.

May 3, 2010  
_I still can’t believe she let me go all the way to Philadelphia by myself. On the amtrak and everything! It was strange, being by myself for so long on the train, and then in Philly when I was waiting for Courtney to meet me in the station. No chauffeur, no chaperone. No Whitly or Milton legacy to live up to, or down to in Martin’s case. The train was...nice? Strange. Malcolm said it’s the express train, it’s what he took when he went to Quantico for his interview. I miss him. He’s not home much, and he can’t call as often as he used to. I knew that when he started working for the FBI it would be like this, but still. And he’s been different since he stopped seeing Martin. I worry about him. I know Mom worries too, she calls him everyday still. She hates that he’s working for the FBI, she tells people he works as a “consultant”, whatever that’s supposed to mean. Gil, I think, was the happiest about it. He took Malcolm out to eat to celebrate and everything. He’s been around the townhouse a lot recently. I think there’s something going on with him and Mom, but they’re being shady about it. Malcolm has no clue, obviously. But she’s different around him, especially when she thinks I’m not paying attention. It’s like she can let her guard down with him. Maybe it’s because he knows about Martin? There’s nothing she has to hide? He was actually at the house before I left, acted all lame when he found out I was taking “a big trip all by myself”. Made me show him the self defense moves he taught me years ago. I laughed at him but he ended up being right, of course, some of the guys at the bar Court brought me to were such jerks. I had to knee this one guy, Steve, in the balls and he still wouldn’t leave us alone. The rest of the weekend was great though, so I’ve decided not to dwell on that part. The school itself was nice, a little small, I think I would like to end up going to a school in the city. If mother has her way it’ll be ivy league, but we’ll see. Court promised me that she hadn’t told anyone who my dad was, which was nice. It was nice just being Ainsley for a change, no baggage, no preconceived ideas about who I was, just another high schooler checking out their options. Her RA is in the journalism program and I got to pick their brain a little bit which was great. I’m not looking forward to the fight with mom when she finds out what major I plan on choosing but I don’t care, if Malcolm gets to chase down murderers I get to become a journalist. Maybe I’ll trade her for the Ivy league if I get to pick the major, she can’t be too mad if I end up staying in the city and going to Columbia._

A quick google search on her phone brings up a memorial page set up by one of his friends. There’s even a photo from the bar on the night he disappeared, a group of boys with Ballard in the middle, all smiles. In the background of the photo she can see herself. Her face is turned away from the camera, but she recognizes the dress she’s wearing. There’s also a man sitting at the bar , she can’t really see his face but he doesn’t look like a typical college kid. He’s older, his clothes read more townie than campus dweller. There’s something about him that makes her uneasy, but she doesn’t remember anything strange from that night. She rereads Malcolm’s analysis, and then folds up the papers and tucks them in between the pages of her diary, which she stores in her bedside table. She spends the rest of the evening alone, lying in bed and staring at her ceiling. Occasionally she pulls out her phone and taps to Malcolm’s entry in her contact list, but never actually makes the call. She can’t put a name to the feelings roiling through her, they’re too fleeting, too dark to examine. Too eerily similar to exhilaration and satisfaction and guilt. She falls into an uneasy sleep, when she wakes the next morning she can feel the remains of a dream slipping away from her, she can only make out the shape of it, swirling black clouds obscuring what her subconscious was attempting to work out on its own, the only clear remnant from the dream is the echo of a rough voice humming a lullaby in her ears. Childish and cloying, nevertheless the melody strikes something deep within her.

Legacy. That’s what her father had said to her during their interview. He wanted to be remembered. What did this killer want? Where’s the legacy in a dead kid and a dozen other broken corpses? She thinks about the hospital, how she was terrified that he was going to come through the break room door, but after the police had arrived, when she had calmed down, she had thought about how strange it was that he didn’t just smash in the glass window and force the door open.

* * *

When Jessica tells her that Malcolm has been taken Ainsley wastes just one moment on panic and then another on disbelief. She’s relieved when Jessica explains the photo album. A task. Research. Something tangible she can do to keep her anger at bay. She flips to the photograph of the angels on the mantle and it feels like her heart stops in her chest. She takes the page and rushes to the basement, barely noticing her mother fluttering at her heels. She starts opening boxes and tearing through them until finally she finds the one she’s looking for. She braces herself before telling her mother she has to tell her something. Makes the split decision to not tell her the whole truth of it. Just the surface details, enough to get Jessica to believe. She shouldn’t have worried, a moment later and John Watkins is crawling out of her memories and into reality, axe in hand.

She runs, her mother dragging her through the house, running to the front door when suddenly there’s glass in her hair and blood on her face and she’s on the ground. Her memory after that is foggy. Her mother’s dressing room, a towel pressed to her head, a monster tearing down the locked door. Then the monster is gone and it’s just her, her mother and Malcolm, crying and hugging while they listen to sirens approach.

By the time the paramedics are there she feels more grounded. They’re surrounded by people in uniforms. And windbreakers. So many windbreakers. She’s never seen so many windbreakers in her life. Okay maybe she’s not as grounded as she thought. But she’s steady. Cogent. Aware. On the mend. Maybe she should sit down. She’s already sitting. Did the paramedic give her something for her pain? Did her mother? The paramedic in front of her says No, head wounds just make people woozy sometimes. Ainsley hadn’t realized she had spoken out loud. She looks up and there he is. The monster. Mr Boots. Her ghost. John Watkins. In cuffs and standing at the threshold of the room, a uniformed officer behind him getting orders from his CO. She feels suddenly clear headed. He’s staring at her and she’s staring back. Malcolm is being helped into a stretcher, her mother being consoled by Gil. No one else has noticed. Finally seeing his face made it seem like a light had turned on in her mind, chasing out the shadows in her memories. Watkins carrying her to the bottom of the steps in her basement. Watkins leaving her the angel figurine as she watches from the top step. Watkins standing at the end of the hallway in her dreams. Then Gil is yelling, finally having noticed the officer loitering with his charge, tells him to get Watkins out of there.

The paramedics quickly examine her and determine that she does not have a concussion, before whisking Malcolm away to the hospital. Ainsley joins him in the back of the ambulance for the ride there, and Gil convinces Jessica to allow him to drive her to the hospital, and Ainsley assumes this is to allow Jessica the space to have a breakdown without her children seeing. Ainsley tries to stay out of the medics' way as much as possible while they work on Malcolm, but she can’t let go of his hand, which she had been gripping tightly since he was put on the stretcher. He drifted into unconsciousness almost the moment the doors to the ambulance closed and Ainsley spends the entirety of the ambulance ride mentally cataloging all of his injuries and allowing the pit of rage in her stomach to build with each bruise and cut that she finds. She closes her eyes and buries the urge to lash out, at anyone, at everyone.

Their arrival in the hospital sparks a flurry of activity. Ainsley steps aside as Malcolm is triaged by a seemingly endless parade of doctors and nurses. He’s admitted, examined, and sent for surgery for half a dozen internal injuries within 30 minutes of their arrival in the emergency department. An intern examines Ainsley and seconds the EMTs conclusion that she does not have a concussion. He gently cleans and dresses the cut on her forehead, and by then Gil and Jessica have arrived, and they wait silently for news in Malcolm’s hospital room, with Gil leaving every few minutes to step out into the hallway and take a call from the precinct.

It’s hours before someone comes into the room and gives them an update on Malcolm. He’s still in surgery but the doctor is confident he’ll make a full recovery. They’re told that the surgery could be a few more hours and that it might be best if they go home and rest for a little bit and then come back. Gil almost has to restrain Jessica at that point, and he quickly thanks the nurse and lets her know that they’ll be staying.

Ainsley folds herself into one of the uncomfortable armchairs in the room, and now that she knows that Malcolm’s going to be okay the adrenaline finally wears off, and she quickly falls asleep. She dreams about the hallway again, this time is different though, this time the dream starts in the basement of the townhouse in the room with the secret door. The door is open, and Ainsley pushes through it into the hallway beyond. There at the end of the hall is the man again, he’s facing away from her, but now she knows it’s John Watkins. This time she can see what’s lying at his feet. It’s Malcolm, bloody and dying. She runs towards him and she can hear John singing, this time the words ringing loudly in her ears: All the good little angels get their wings shiny wings, pearly wings, and up they go to heaven. But the bad little angels all fall down, fall fall down, tumble down, they’ll never get to heaven. She’s getting closer, but John is turning around and calling her name, his arm is stretched out like he’s offering something, but there’s nothing there. Suddenly she’s awake, her neck aching from sleeping in the crappy hospital armchair. Malcolm is out of surgery, he’s asleep in the hospital bed, Jessica at his side. Jessica says he was awake for a minute or two when he was wheeled into the room, but he’s been out for about an hour now. The surgeon said he’ll be in pain for a while, but he should be okay to be discharged in a few days. Ainsley kisses Malcolm on the temple before hugging Jessica and telling her she’s going to go back to her penthouse to get some rest, she’ll be back later that day.

She sees Gil in the hallway, he’s on the phone and he looks pissed. He spots her and his face softens, he doesn’t hang up but he holds the phone away from himself as she approaches and hugs him, when she pulls away she sees the surprise on his face, and honestly she’s a little surprised at herself as well. She tells him she’s going to head to her penthouse for a bit, get some rest in a real bed. She’ll be back later. He tries to get her to agree to a patrolman driving her home, but she resists, tells him she’ll take a cab and she’ll be fine. When she steps out of the hospital she flags down a cab and gives her mother’s address. It’s a short ride uptown, but she spends it replaying every moment from the evening in her head.

When the cab pulls in front of the townhouse the police have already left, leaving only remnants of police tape in their wake. She retrieves the flashlight from beneath the kitchen sink and makes her way into the basement. She stands before the fake wall that John had come through the previous night and takes three very deep breaths. After her last exhalation she bends down on her knees and pushes open the secret door. The other side is pitch black and the void she enters seems to swallow the light from the flashlight. She straightens herself and tries to get her bearings. She turns the flashlight on the walls around her and notes that they were built of brick, and very damp. There is only one way forward, so she carefully makes her way down the dark hallway. Other than her flashlight there is no other light source, and the only sounds she hears are her own footsteps echoing back to her.

She knows that the police and FBI have already combed through the labyrinth of tunnels and rooms beneath the townhouse, but still she has to see for herself. She thinks he may have been sleeping in the first room. There’s a mattress pushed up against the wall, a rickety table with one chair, and a single naked bulb hanging from the center of the ceiling. The space is surprisingly clean, considering the dampness, but it’s bare and lonely. The thought of someone living down here is deeply unsettling and Ainsley shudders at the thought of Watkins being just below the surface of her home all these years. The police were unable to determine if he had been living here full time, but was in the least using it as sort of a makeshift storage facility. They had found clothing, tools, and other miscellany they were hoping to link to some of his victims. Most of his belongings had been cleared out, to be sorted into evidence boxes and examined by the police. The next room she walked into was the one Malcolm had been kept in. The floor is still stained with blood and the hook he had been shackled to remains embedded in the concrete floor. She stands in the center of the room for a moment, trying to imagine how Malcolm had felt being trapped down here by himself for so many hours. How he had reacted when he found out he was below the townhouse and his family was in danger. She’s furious in that moment. Furious with Martin for bringing Watkins into their lives, with Malcolm for running off by himself with a drunk cop chasing a monster, with herself for not being able to remember anything useful from when she was a kid. She knows she’s been in these rooms before, but she can’t remember anything.

She wanders back to the first room and sits at the table. She places her hands flat on the table in front of her and closes her eyes. Takes in a deep breath, holds it, lets it go. She concentrates on the few memories she does have of John Watkins, tries to will herself into the headspace of her five year old self, not merely remembering these events but reliving them. She takes another deep inhale of the stale basement air, hoping to trigger a sense memory, but it doesn’t work. She gets up to leave, too frustrated to continue her search, but stops herself as she approaches the door. She spots something on the wall, writing scratched into the brick, about three feet off the ground, two letters, A.W. She stoops down and traces the letters with her fingers, the letters are faded, she’s surprised she even spotted them, doubts that the police had even noticed them. Something tugs at her memory while she stares at her initials. She remembers something...opening? A secret, something she can’t tell anyone about. Her eyes drift closed as she tries to focus on the wall, on the room around her. Slowly images fall into place, she remembers the room, but the bed is gone. The table looks new, there’s a cabinet and a bookshelf against the wall. She recognizes her father’s touches instantly, textbooks and medical diagrams cover every surface. But something doesn’t belong to her father here, something low to the ground and hidden, something he didn’t even know about. She can see the wall in her mind, but there are no initials yet. She reaches out her hand, but it passes right through the brick. This can’t be right? She tries again but she’s shocked out of her trance by a subway train rolling by somewhere beyond the wall. She sighs and leans her head against the wall, still level with her scratched out initials. She examines the brick and notices something else, the mortar is different from the rest of the wall. Five bricks have mortar that looks slightly darker than the rest of the wall, with her initial’d brick in the middle of the others. It's like turning the page to the angel photo all over again, her heart stammers and then she’s up and running back to the main basement. She returns with a hammer and examines the wall for a few minutes before admitting that she has no idea what she’s doing and just starts swinging the hammer with all her strength at the bricks. It’s thirty minutes before she finally breaks through the wall and she’s ready to drop from exhaustion. She gets down on her knees and starts to pull the loose debris from the hole she’s made. It’s pitch black beyond the wall, but she shines her flashlight through and can make out a box, about the size of a large shoebox but made of unvarnished wood. She reaches into the hole and is just able to grasp the box and pull it out. She drags it over to the table and takes off the top. It’s full of papers and photos. She can see her name on some of the papers, and Malcolm’s as well. She looks at her watch and makes the decision to pack up the box’s contents and take them with her, back to her penthouse. She’s sure the first thing her mother will do in the morning is call a contractor to close up this part of the house again, and she needed to take her time with the box, to unravel its contents in peace. She finds an old duffel and shoves the box inside, cleans up the bricks as much as possible, and hopes that Jessica doesn’t plan on exploring the secret rooms before boarding them up. She calls a cab and makes her way back to her penthouse, clutching the duffel to her chest the whole way.

When she’s safely ensconced in her own home she takes the box out of the duffel and places it on her dining room table. She contemplates it for a few moments while deciding how she wants to do this. She walks into her kitchen and switches on her coffee maker and pulls her hair up into a ponytail. She’s exhausted and her head is throbbing where she hit it off the mantle, but she knows she’ll never sleep with the box sitting on her table all night.

She spends the next two hours reviewing every item in the box and organizing them into piles on her dining room table. Pile one is devoted to Malcolm. Photos of him as a toddler, kindergarten progress reports, drawings signed with his name. Mementos of his childhood, catalogued right up to around age 11, then there’s a jump in time to the present, which is represented by articles written about his most recent cases with the NYPD. Her pile is much larger. There is no break in Watkins’ devotion to her life. The years are represented quite thoroughly from her birth until the present day. Photos, report cards, childhood drawings, pages she recognized as being ripped from the diary she had kept during middle school. Even an essay she had written for school once, and a program from her high school graduation. She’s surprised she doesn’t find a film reel of her segments on the show. The last pile is the smallest, it contains only one item: a family portrait of the Whitly’s, taken before Martin’s arrest. She and Malcolm are smiling in their Sunday best, flanked by their parents, whose faces have been scratched out with something sharp, much like all the faces in the Watkin’s photo album.

Ainsley sits with these items surrounding her and waits for the panic, the fear, the revulsion at finding her life catalogued so intimately by a man who has caused her family so much pain. It doesn’t come. She chalks it up to exhaustion. She packs up the box again and shoves it into the back of her closet and gets into bed. The sun is coming up but she thinks she can get a couple hours sleep before going back to the hospital. As she sits in bed she contemplates how if she had found the box shoved into a nondescript corner of the Whitly basement she would have thought nothing of it, just another box of mouldering mementos forgotten and rotting. But Watkin’s had hidden this away like it was something to be ashamed of. Took the time to remortar the loose bricks so that their hiding place wouldn’t be found. She thinks about the brick with her initials. Had she been the one to scratch her initials into it when she was a kid? Or did he do it, and if so, what the fuck does that mean?

* * *

Malcolm’s recovery takes weeks. She can’t bring herself to tell him about everything she’s found, not when he’s still healing. And then, when he’s back to full strength it just doesn’t seem worth it, to dredge up old memories when Watkins is locked away and can’t hurt them any longer. She makes the conscious decision to not think about him anymore, locks him away in the same drawer she used to keep Martin. When she looks up his name in the BOP Federal Prison Locator, it’s only to reassure herself that he’s still in FCI Ray Brook, hours away from her and the city. She doesn’t research the logistics of renting a car and she doesn’t look up the information for how to send an inmate mail.

She moves on. She throws herself into work, is delighted with the chance to anchor, and is more than happy to return to the happy socialite life she had always embraced. She goes out, she meets new people, and she tries tries tries to fill the emptiness inside herself that she can no longer ignore. She tries to be nicer to her mother, pulls strings to get her invited to the biggest wedding of the year, takes it in stride when she finds out that her mother has stabbed her serial killer father, and takes it in stride again when she finds out, no actually, it was her brother who stabbed her serial killer father. Covers petty crimes like burglary and tax fraud. Dreams every night about the hallway and about Watkins, even when she drinks, even when she double fists vodka and ambien. She goes out more, every night. Meets new people every night. People who can hold her in their warm arms and make her feel like she’s alive. Like she isn’t some hollow thing. A facsimile human. Malcolm asks for her help with Eve and she happily obliges. Happy to take on anything that will keep her busy and focused and distracted. But it doesn’t work, more heartbreak. Eve had deceived them, and even though Ainsley would have done the same in her position, knows that Malcolm would’ve done the same in her position, it still stings. Her brother, who doesn’t trust anyone, trusted this woman and of course all roads lead back to Martin Whitly.

* * *

When Nicholas Endicott walks into her mother’s dining room she feels like an alarm is going off in her head. She fixes a smile on her face and says all the right things, but her every instinct is telling her to run. She can’t shake it, even hours later. By now her radar for bullshit is pretty good so she goes with her gut and starts to dive into his life. She almost laughs when she finds Sophie’s name on a list of executive assistants from one of his defunct LLCs from the 90s. She immediately sets out for Claremont to confront her father. He admits to her, Malcolm, and Jessica that it’s Endicott that Sophie had given him information on, in exchange for her life. Ainsley thinks about how cruel it is that now Eve is dead and Sophie is alive. How Sophie had tried to escape one monster, only to end up in the hands of another. That Eve had been a scared little kid who outgrew her trauma and honed it into something she used to help others, only to be killed and thrown away like trash. How even after weeks of trying to bury him she can still hear John Watkins at the back of her mind, humming her a lullaby.

She vows to herself that she will do everything in her power to bring down Endicott. She doesn’t even flinch when barely even 24 hours later he’s not so subtly threatening her over drinks. Doesn’t blink at his offer of power and prestige. Just keeps smiling her perfect smile and letting empty words fall out of her mouth. She should’ve known better than to think that that would’ve been his only plan.

* * *

The townhouse is dark when she enters the foyer. The staff are all gone for the night, and neither her mother nor Malcolm answer when she calls out for them. A tendril of worry climbs up her spine as she enters the eerily quiet house. She hasn’t heard from her mother or brother in hours, neither of them are answering texts or picking up their phones. Not even Gil had answered when she had desperately called him. She had rushed to the townhouse, but another dead end. She calls out once again for her mother, but the voice that answers from the dark of the sitting room does not belong to Jessica Whitly. A light switches on and Nicholas Endicott is leaning against the mantle, drink in hand. Every emotion that was swirling around in her suddenly vanishes and is replaced by a bizarre sense of calm. He orders her to sit, and she does. He demands her phone, she unlocks it and hands it to him. He places his hand on her shoulder and she closes her eyes. She hears him send a text and then toss her phone on the coffee table. Feels him sink into the seat next to her. He begins to talk, his hand still gripping her shoulder, but she refuses to listen. She goes away inside. Shuts him and the world out as she falls deeper into her mind.

She’s four years old and she’s tottering down the basement steps. She can hear her daddy. Knows he comes down here and disappears for so long sometimes. She wants him to read her a story. She pushes open his door but he isn’t there, but she can see an opening in the wall, like a door but not a door. She goes in and she can see her daddy walking at the end of a hallway, but her short legs can’t keep up with him. He turns a corner and he’s gone. She’s scared suddenly. Wants her daddy to come back. For Malcolm to be there. It’s too dark. She sits down and starts to cry. Suddenly she’s being picked up and carried. Carefully she’s brought back through the door that’s not a door, out of her father’s office, and set down on the basement stairs. It’s dark, but a man she’s never seen before is kneeling so that he’s at eye level with her. He wipes her tears off her cheeks and tells her it’s okay, she just got a little lost. Tells her she shouldn’t be wandering around alone in the dark. She thinks she should be scared, but isn’t. He sends back up the stairs and slips back into the dark.

The front door slams shut and she opens her eyes. She’s back in the sitting room with Endicott, and Malcolm is here. She notices then that she’s been crying, tears freshly flowing down her face. She stands up from the couch and crosses the room while Malcolm and Endicott face off against each other. She’s afraid for Malcolm, he seems off balance, and suddenly he has a gun. She slowly moves so that she is positioned behind Endicott, who is so wrapped up in himself that he doesn’t notice her. She glances at the sideboard and notices the knife that Malcolm had left out after slipping his ankle monitor. Quietly she reaches for it and holds it tight to her side. Endicott is still talking and Malcolm looks terrified. A knife is a simple thing, Ainsley thinks to herself. A tool. A means to an end. Endicott is looking at Malcolm the same way Ainsley is looking at her knife. The same way he looked at Sophie, and Eve, and eventually how he will look at Jessica. They are instruments, blunt objects that he uses to hammer his legacy into place. Ainsley looks at Malcolm and the shaking gun and the fear in his eyes and she knows finally and truly, the mistake Martin Whitly had made so many years ago, when he had poured all of his darkness into his eldest child, hoping to grow something there. She had always been the one with a sharper edge, but he had chosen the hammer, instead of the knife. She would not make the same mistake. She steps forward, grabs a fistful of Endicott’s hair, pulls him close to her, presses the knife harshly against his throat and quickly slices him open. He turns to face her and his eyes are full of disbelief. She can no longer see Malcolm, or the room she is standing in. All she sees is Endicott, bleeding, and the threat he had held over her family. This is enough to ignite her rage and she lunges at him with the knife over and over again until he finally falls.

She looks up and there’s Malcolm, frozen in place. His phone rings, and she can dimly hear the voice of their father. Their conversation is quick, Malcolm says a few words and then hangs up and dials another number. His voice has changed, he sounds panicked and groggy, he’s telling someone that his sister is unconscious, there was a man and a knife and please send help. Ainsley looks at her hands, turns them over and looks at the blood. She’s awake isn’t she? He hangs up the phone and suddenly he’s at her side telling her that there isn’t much time and that he’s going to fix it, he says it over and over again I can fix this I can fix this. She’s numb as she watches him work, he upends furniture, and tosses objects around the room. He takes her hands and apologizes before pulling her down to the floor. He takes Endicott’s hand and wraps it around her arm and squeezes tightly, hard enough for it to bruise, then presses Endicott’s fingertips into her skin, leaving half moon marks from his nails. Takes the knife and leaves the room, when he returns he is wearing latex gloves and the blade has been washed clean. He nicks her, carefully, on her neck, her forearms, her face. Carefully placed cuts to tell the story he’s spinning in his head. His hands are perfectly still. He takes Endicott’s hand and palms the handle of the blade, before removing his gloves and doing the same with his own hand. He then plunges it, without hesitation, into Endicott’s body twice so that it is once again covered in Endicott’s blood, and drops it to the floor. He’s talking quickly again, telling her what she has to do and say when she’s being interviewed by the police, how she has to be consistent every time she tells the story. She can hear sirens now, and almost can’t keep up with what he’s saying and she doesn’t understand until she realizes, finally, what’s happening. Malcolm is fixing it, he’s taking care of her. She has a vision suddenly, of her own darkness pouring into Malcolm, as her father’s had, and this is what causes the panic to bubble forth and what causes her tears to well on her cheeks. She shakes her head and starts saying “no” and “you can’t” over and over again but Malcolm keeps talking, keeps repeating his careful instructions until she is finally hysterical and her breath is ragged and she is blinded by tears. Malcolm takes her in his arms, presses a kiss to her temple, and tells her that she’s doing great. Then he smashes her head into the mantle of the fireplace and everything goes dark.

When she opens her eyes she’s in the fucking hallway again. Dark, damp, and freezing. She’s so fucking tired of this hallway. And of John. And of the body at his feet. She can't see the face but she knows that it’s Endicott. She turns away, tries to find the hidden door but no matter which way she looks she’s always looking down towards the end of the hallway. John is silent. No lullaby this time. He’s silent and staring and she can’t stand it anymore and she just starts screaming. She falls to her knees and screams until she is hoarse. She looks up and John is walking towards her, dragging the body behind him. He gets closer and she realizes it’s not Endicott, and it’s not a dead body. It’s Martin, tied up and mouth taped over and struggling against his restraints. John drops him and holds out a knife to Ainsley. She doesn’t take it. She’s still on her knees and she’s looking up at John, he’s not frowning, not smiling, just silently looming, with the knife in his outstretched hand. She looks down at Martin and he’s not struggling anymore, he’s looking at the knife. Then he looks at her, and he has the same face he had at their first meeting at Claremont, blissfully happy and proud of her. The face of a father looking at the daughter he adores. She looks up at John and she takes the knife and then she wakes up with a splitting headache and Jessica’s perfume filling her nose. She’s in the hospital again. She’s hooked up to a machine and its beeping every few seconds, which she takes as a good sign. Her mother is next to her, in a crappy armchair, and she’s asleep, her hand resting next to Ainsley’s on the bed. She’s been crying, tear tracks running down her face, and Aisnley can’t remember the last time she saw her mother cry, or the last time she saw her asleep for that matter. Her headache is getting worse. She takes Jessica’s hand in her own and closes her eyes. Her sleep is dreamless this time.

When she wakes up again the police are there. Not Malcolm’s friends, these are ones she doesn’t know. She’s not sure how long she’s been out for, but she thinks it's the next morning. They’re insisting on Ainsley making a statement, but Jessica is barely letting them get a word in as they try to ask Ainsley what happened. Ainsley is eager to know where Malcolm is and she knows she won’t get answers until this is done. She takes Jessica’s hand again and tells her it’s okay. She can do this. And she can. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to remember everything Malcolm said to her, but the lies come easy. They mix with the truth seamlessly, and she knows that the cops believe her. She knows that they had already seen the crime scene photos, and the photos that had been taken of her injuries, and they’re looking at her small and frail in this hospital bed, with a head injury and her wealthy mother, and that’s all it takes for them. Preconceived notions and a little set dressing. It helps that Gil is down the hall, recovering from his own run in with the great Nicholas Endicott. She knows that Malcolm took that into consideration. The cops thank her for her time and leave. Detective Dani Powell comes in next. She looks exhausted, and Ainsley is sure she hasn’t left Gil’s side since he came in. She tells Jessica and Ainsley that Malcolm is down at the precinct being interviewed. The townhouse is still being processed, rendered a crime scene once again. Typically this case would be handled by Major Crimes, but considering Gil and Malcolm’s involvement they obviously can’t take point, and another department is handling it. She does say that she has a friend who’s helping to work the case, and that things look good for Malcolm. She doesn’t think they’ll hold him indefinitely during the investigation, and that he’ll be released later that day. Jessica thanks her, and to everyone’s surprise, hugs her. Dani nods goodbye and heads back into the hall, and, Ainsley assumes, back to Gil’s room.

The doctor comes by and updates them both on her status. She has a concussion, which is the worst of her injuries. The cuts and bruises are superficial, so no permanent damage. Her head hit the mantle in almost the same exact spot where she last split her head open during the Watkins attack, but she needed stitches this time. They were the dissolving kind so she wouldn’t have to come back. Just had to keep the wound clean and change the bandages. She was going to be discharged later that day, but she was under no circumstances allowed to return to work, or do anything strenuous, and in fact the doctor would only allow her to be discharged so long as she agreed to be released into Jessica’s care. She had to be carefully observed for the next 24 hours to make sure her symptoms don’t worsen. Jessica agreed to all of these terms before Ainsley was able to answer for herself.

* * *

They return to the townhouse just as Malcolm steps out of a patrol car, he hugs them both and helps Ainsley inside, despite her insistence that she can still walk all by herself. The three of them hesitate outside the sitting room, before Jesica abruptly turns and walks into the dining room instead. Malcolm and Ainsley follow. Jessica pours two drinks, one for herself, and one she hands to Malcolm. The doctor had told Ainsley no alcohol for at least a week. They settle down into the dining room chairs, and Malcolm tells them how it went at the precinct. He hasn’t been charged, but the investigation is still pending. One of Jessica’s many lawyers are confident that it’s clearly a case of self defense and that it won’t end up in court. Additionally, evidence had surfaced from the search of Endicott’s apartment that linked him to Eddie, so Malcolm was most likely going to be cleared of that charge as well. It seemed like the DA was most likely going to want to get everything over with as quickly as possible, so as to avoid a media circus. They all talk a bit more about what had happened, with Jessica mostly being the one asking questions and Ainsley and Malcolm repackaging the truth into answers that they knew she could handle.

Jessica finally retires to her bedroom, leaving Malcolm and Ainsley alone for the first time since the attack. Malcolm looks at her and for the first time she sees a glint of fear in his eyes, and she wonders if this is how he looks at Martin, with a mix of fear and love. She wonders if Martin ever got used to it. He clears his throat and she’s pulled out of her thoughts. He begins by telling her what’s most likely going to happen next. It’s an echo of the earlier conversation they had with Jessica, except now he doesn’t tiptoe around the details of the attack. He tells her that his friend in the ME’s office was able to get him a copy of the autopsy report, and it tells the story of Nicholas Endicott’s death exactly the way Malcolm wanted it to, DNA transfer on the body confirms that the knife was used on Ainsley first before it was used on Endicott, and palm prints on the handle prove that the only two people who used the knife that night were Endicott and Malcolm. He tells her the story that he had told the police, that he had received a weird text from her, got to the townhouse and found her unconscious with cuts and bruises on her face and arms. That suddenly Endicott attacked him and they fought before he was able to get ahold of the knife, but Endicott kept coming for him so he defended himself, and then he called the cops. He tells her how he faked the fight between himself and Endicott by nearly breaking his hand punching Endicott’s face, and throwing himself into the wall and smashing his own head into the mantle piece, albeit not nearly as hard as he had smashed Ainsley’s. He tells her what’s going to happen next in the investigation, things she already knows from years of covering crime for the network, but she lets him talk, too afraid to begin her own confession. When he’s finished he walks to the sidebar and pours himself another drink and sighs heavily before throwing it back. He’s never looked more like their mother, and Ainsley smiles a little at the thought of anyone thinking he’s at all similar to their father. Then it’s her turn.

She starts at the beginning, with Mr. Boots and his angel. Most of this Malcolm already knows, but he keeps his face neutral as she moves through the story. She tells him everything: her connection to the John Watkins victim from Pennsylvania, what she found underneath the house, everything. Whoever said confession is good for the soul is a liar, because when she’s done she feels sick. Malcolm is silent for a while and then he pulls out his phone and texts someone, he gets a response a few moments later and that’s when he finally speaks. He tells her he made them both appointments for the next morning. She doesn’t have to ask who with, she already knows.

The next morning she's in a waiting room surrounded by children’s picture books and toys. Soon enough Malcolm comes out of the wooden door marked “Private” and sits down next to her. He tells her it’s her turn and tells her to take her time, that he’ll be waiting for her. Ainsley takes a deep breath and walks through the door and into the office of Dr. Gabrielle Le Deux. She sits in the chair opposite of the doctor, who’s just as keen eyed and refined as Ainsley remembers her being.

“Well, Ainsley,” she says, “do you think you’re ready to talk about Mr. Boots now?”

Ainsley looks at her hands for a few moments, steadies herself, and then looks into Dr. Le Deux’s eyes and nods.

**Author's Note:**

> Can you believe I started this six months ago because the sentence "Her mother's face held only fear, while Ainsley only felt exhilaration" entered my brain and wouldn't leave, and then I ended up cutting that line anyway? Unreal.


End file.
